Death and All His Friends
by ladyoftheknightley
Summary: The First Order had a pretty high mortality rate. Drabbles about nine of the members' deaths - from the noble and sacrificing to the almost commonplace, and everything in between. Angsty. For Camp Potter.


_Disclaimer: Copyright JKR, and a big shoutout to Coldplay for shamelessly stealing their title (though the song has nothing to do with this fic)_

_A/N: Written for week 2 of Archery (write about death) in Camp Potter, for the Weasley cabin. And fair warning: this is probably the least cheerful thing I've ever written._

* * *

At school, Dorcas Meadows was not the first of her friends to be kissed, and neither was she the first to get a boyfriend. Furthermore, she was not the first to lose her virginity, have her heart broken, get engaged, get married, break off an engagement or have a child.

In the Order, despite being a few years older than most of the other members, she was not the first to be injured or injure; the first to report back some intelligence of use or the first to kill a Death Eater in order to protect innocents. There was something childish within her, even though she was almost thirty now, that was pouting and whining and had a ridiculous desire to be the first to do _something_ (although what she could not say) because time was running out.

When Voldemort came for her personally—her reputation had preceded her—she was the first to be personally sought out and killed by him. Others had been killed in battle, or in murders carried out by Death Eaters, but she was the first to be attacked by the greatest Dark Wizard of all time in her home.

Her last, perverse thought was that she was glad she finally got to be the first at something, even if it was at something as tragic as this.

* * *

Benjy Fenwick's last thought, before he was blasted into a hundred little pieces, the majority of which would never be found by Bellatrix Lestrange, was that he hoped he'd turned the gas off. He lived in a muggle block of flats, being muggleborn, and had a very lazy landlord who wouldn't go round for months after the rent stopped being paid. It would be an awful lot to waste, if he had left it on, and it could be dangerous to the other muggles who lived there.

If he'd had time, he might have laughed at the ridiculousness, but he didn't, and so he couldn't.

* * *

Gideon Prewett was going to go down fighting, if he had to go down at all. He was twenty four and invincible, of course, but if it _did_ come down to it, he'd die a brave and noble death, taking as many of them with him as he could.

What actually happened bore little resemblance to that dream: he saw Fabian fall, and, forgetting everything he'd been taught, raced over to his brother's side, dropping his wand as he did so. He heard Dolohov's gleeful laugh at this development, but the only regret he could manage in the second before the green light hit him was that he wouldn't meet this next baby of Molly and Arthur's—and that was such a shame, because Molly'd said she really, truly thought it was a girl this time.

It would've been nice to find out if that was true or not.

* * *

Amelia Bones would never forget the conversation she'd had with her brother Edgar when he'd told her he and his wife, Sarah, were to join the Order of the Phoenix. "Are you _suicidal_?" she'd screeched. "What about your children?!"

"It's for the children we're joining," he'd replied, as though it were obvious

"Yes, because you'll do such an excellent job of protecting them if you get yourselves _killed_," she'd snapped.

"We're trying to make the world a better place for them!" Edgar said.

"Which is all very noble," Amelia cried, "and I'm not saying they don't do good work, but that Order is a death sentence!"

"Oh, because the Ministry's doing a much better job of protecting people these days?" scoffed Edgar.

While Amelia would never have supported the Death Eaters' cause, she was a firm believer in acting within the law, and however much she believed in the Order's cause, they came perilously close to vigilantism at times. This, however, was not the main reason Amelia was against her brother and his wife joining the group. There was another, far more important, one. "And who, exactly, it going to raise your children if you die?"

"You," Edgar said immediately. "Ian and Kath have to think about Nathaniel and Susan—they don't have the room to take Abbie and Tom in, too, and Mum and Dad are too old now, but I need to know they will stay within the family. Please, Amelia, I am _begging_ you to do this for me."

Perhaps because Amelia had never heard her younger brother beg for anything in his life before, she said yes without argument. Later, the official details were hashed out, guardianship papers signed and authenticated, and, as Edgar and Sarah grew more and more heavily involved in the Order's work, Amelia resigned herself more and more the fact that she would—perhaps sooner rather than later—become Abigail and Thomas's legal guardian. She even went as far as to buy a house in the countryside; she told everyone that it was about time she moved out of her grotty London flat, but really, she didn't need a house with four bedrooms and a large garden if there was only her to enjoy it...

She was woken one April morning in 1980 to a knocking on her front door, and even though she was never any good at Divination, she knew what the news was before she'd even seen the two Hit Wizards from the Ministry standing there. She was devastated, of course she was—it's her _brother_ and his wife—but she wasn't shocked. She listened as the Hit Wizards spoke, their voices shaking slightly as they said things like "attack happened late last night" and "found lying in their beds as though they were sleeping—probably didn't feel much pain" and "no evidence of torture" and she nodded along, trying to feel relief at that—Voldemort's followers were not usually known for their swift, almost merciful killings.

The two Hit Wizards seemed visibly shaken, even more so than was normal for such a case, but this just served to make Amelia realise that she had to pull herself together for the sake of Abigail and Thomas. "Where are the children?" she asked. The two Hit Wizards exchanged a glance. "Are you keeping them at the Ministry? I'm their legal guardian now; I should go to them..."

"Madam Bones," said the older looking of the two men, "I am truly sorry, but you've misunderstood us: everyone present at your brother's home last night was killed in their beds."

"E-even the children?" she asked, turning white. The Hit Wizard nodded. Amelia reeled, gasping for breath. Her brother's death, even his wife's, those she had been, on some level, expecting and ready for. But she had never, never in a million years, imagined that the children would be murdered, too...

She pitched forward, and the Hit Wizards caught her just before she hit the ground.

* * *

The Mckinnons were one of those old Gryffindor families like the Weasleys and the Potters, and the lot of them had been lions for as long as anyone could remember. Marlene was no exception to this rule, of course, but even her brave and noble parents thought it was too much of a risk for their daughter to join the Order of the Phoenix, and begged her not to join.

Marlene ignore them and joined up anyway, but she couldn't bring herself to feel guilty about the fear and worry she brought her parents until one hot summer's night in 1981 when Death Eater's attacked her parents' house. She and her older brother were there, too, to celebrate her father's birthday—they probably followed her there, she realised, and the guilt she was by now suddenly feeling intensified so much it _hurt_ (though that could just be the Cruciatus Curse Bellatrix Lestrange threw at her).

If she hadn't joined the Order, she wouldn't have to watch first her mother, then her brother and finally her father fall at the hands of Death Eaters. _Their blood is on my hands as much and more as it is on the Death Eaters' _she thought. The guilt at this only stopped when her heart did.

It was almost a mercy that that took mere seconds.

* * *

When James Potter realised who was at the door that cold Hallowe'en night, he meant it when he shouted to his wife to take Harry and run. He was twenty one and he didn't want to die then—what twenty one year old ever did?—but he _will_ die for Lily and for Harry because he loves them both more than he thought possible. He genuinely believed that if he could just hold Voldemort off long enough for them two run, whilst he himself may die, it would be worth it because he _can_ save them.

But when he saw the wand pointed at him, the flash of green light coming towards him and everything seemed to slow down as he awaited death with certainty, he wished for a moment that Lily were here beside him.

It was a selfish wish—he knew she was safer the further away from Voldemort she got, and if Harry can't have two parents, he at least needs one still alive. But in the moment before the curse hit him and he dropped to the floor, he wished she was there, too.

He wished he had one last opportunity to kiss her, to taste her and smell her and breathe her in. He wished he could hear her laugh, hear her cry, hear her voice change one last time from anger ("I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the Giant Squid!") to happiness ("He kicked! I felt the baby kick James, I felt him kick!") to love ("I do.") and everything in between. He wanted to see her, see those beautiful eyes that the baby is blessed with; that gorgeous hair, all fiery Gryffindor red; those _magnificent_ legs...

Most of all, he wanted to feel her—feel her hand in his on that first trip to Hogsmeade; her soft lips against his chapped ones; her body pressed against his at night. That was his last desperate, selfish wish, and then James Potter wished no more.

* * *

Lily Potter had no time to rage against Voldemort; to rage against Peter, who had sold them out; against Albus, who had taken James's cloak when it could have been used to hide them. She had no time to rage against Severus (she knew it was he who had told Voldemort of the Prophecy) or Sybil Trelawney (who had made it). She could not rage against wizarding society, for making a world so unequal; against the first person who had insinuated that those of her birth were somehow lesser and had, therefore, begun this whole war in the way-back-when.

She had no time to be mad about any of that, and so instead she simply raged that she would not get to see her son—their wonderful, beautiful, incredible baby boy—grow up. He was why she refused to step aside for Voldemort—she knew that, even if he did keep his word and let her live, there would be no point living in a world without Harry, and she _still_ wouldn't be able to watch him grow.

And so, unknowingly, it was her rage at being denied him that saved him.

* * *

Frank Longbottom, his mother discovered once the dust had settled, had expected to die. This much was made clear to her from the will she was delivered, shortly before Christmas 1981. It had become clear to everyone by this point that neither he nor his wife would ever recover, and so Augusta decided it would be pertinent to get his estate in order.

The will itself was meticulously detailed and put together, in the way only a will of a person who expected to die—and soon—could be. Every item he owned—property, money, physical assets—was there, and given that Frank had been the sole heir to the Ancient House of Longbottom, there was much to be sorted through.

The will instructed that his assets were to be divided equally between his wife, Alice, and his son, Neville, and Augusta suspected that Alice's will, when she came to look at it, would say something very similar. In the event of Alice's death, her share was to pass to Neville. If Neville was still underage at the time of his father's death, his assets were to be held in trust until he came of age. The list of possible trustees—beginning with her and her husband and ending with her sister, Enid, whom everyone knew was a few Knuts short of a Galleon now that she was one hundred and six, and would therefore only be called upon in rather dire circumstances—went on for six pages.

In short, it was the will of someone who knew that his end was coming, but, ever a practical woman, Augusta decided to be grateful for this, as it meant she didn't have to spend months in endless meetings with lawyers and solicitors trying to make sense of it all. She arrived at Gringotts thinking she would just need to sign a few pieces of parchment and everything would be transferred to Neville (to be held, of course, by her until his seventeenth birthday). But, as was so often the case these days, things did not go according to plan.

"What do you mean, the items cannot be transferred because he's not dead?" she barked.

The clerk's face grew more and more agitated and apologetic, and on another day, she might have had some sympathy for him, but now... "Mr. Longbottom used one of the oldest forms of magic to ensure the safety of his will," he said, sounding as though every word pained him. "I am, of course, aware of the, ah, terrible events of late, but the magic he used was some of the oldest binding magic we know of. The contents of his will cannot be released until he is dead, and as, despite everything, he is _not_ dead, they have to remain in his vault until he, ah, passes on."

"So this will is effectively useless?" Augusta asked crisply.

"For the, ah, forseable future, yes," replied the clerk, and Augusta picked up the pages and pages and _pages_ of legal documentation Frank had meticulously sorted out, all of which was apparently worth nothing.

And she had to laugh, then, at the absurdity of it all, mostly because, she realised as the clerk eyed her with growing alarm, if she didn't laugh, she would cry.

* * *

Mary Macdonald didn't die during the first war, but sometimes she thought she might as well have.

It wasn't that she was suicidal, as such—she didn't _want_ to die, it just often felt like she had. Most of her friends had been killed, and many of those who hadn't has suffered through a fate worse than death—Frank and Alice Longbottom, for example, were unrecognisable in St. Mungo's. (She's promised Augusta she would visit them every week, but so far, she'd only managed that first, soul-destroying visit, and that had been nearly a year ago now.)

Some of her friends had managed to escape without physical harm coming to them, but often their mental pains were even worse. Most families had suffered at least one loss, others had been pushed into poverty as business failed due to the efforts of the Death Eaters to keep so-called undesirables out of the wizarding community. People were slow to trust and even slower to develop new relationships, lest they, too be ripped apart by death.

Some people she had know disappeared almost entirely—an old school friend, Shelia Flanigan, returned to her home country of Ireland, which had been relatively untouched by the war, as she couldn't face staying in the same country that had been so badly damaged, seeing the places which so often reminded her of old friends now gone.

Remus Lupin also hadn't been killed, but he had all but disappeared, too. Shelia, she knew, had gone to Ireland, but she had no idea where he had gone. Once, when she had gone to lay yet more flowers on Lily and James's grave, she had seen him already stood there and unaware of her coming up behind him. He had looked so utterly broken (and she was not surprised: three friends dead and one in prison for the ultimate betrayal) that she hadn't known what to say to him. Later, she regretted that—he'd vanished, apparating away, before she could formulate a sentence and she hadn't seen him since.

She might have said the wrong thing, but at least she would have said _something_...

No, Mary Macdonald was not dead. But, as she turned over the newspaper and read reports of yet more Death Eaters trials, something that now elicited no emotion in her whatsoever, she felt as though she might as well be.


End file.
